The Lyrical Obstacle

Hello All!
It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged… Well, not THAT long but it’s feels like an eternity to me. I hope you all are well?? Feel free to let me know in the comments! I love hearing from you!

Mother’s Day we went for some açai! I love it with condensed milk, strawberries and… milk powder? That’s what the Portuguese-English translation said it was!

Anyways, I haven’t been to busy to blog just haven’t had much to say, I guess. I’ve been keeping busy doing what I do best… Taking care of my kiddos and whipping up some good meals. Not very exciting.

Yum! Cinnamon Roll Cake… right before it enters the oven! Delicious!Julia’s first time making homemade flour tortillas! They were delish!

My husband’s the busy one especially now that we’ve been approved for a building for the church! Yep! You heard that right! Belo Horizonte’s going to have a Fellowship Church real soon! We’re so excited. Keep praying for favor because we need to renovate a few things and want ridiculously low prices. I believe! Believe with me!

Now that the building’s in process we feel pressed for time regarding our song service. We have one service of songs down but…. That will not do. If you know anything about my husband and myself is that we love a good song service. He played bass for 10 years in our mother church and I’ve been playing piano for years in the bible studies and for 5 years in our pioneer church before coming to Brazil. I appreciate a good song service and love to worship God and to see our church contend for His presence. But….now our song service is in Portuguese.

I’ll admit, it’s been frustrating. First we weren’t sure how to get songs for church in Portuguese…? I mean, we found out we were moving here in October, then left on January 1st. That didn’t give us a lot of time to prepare for a Portuguese song service. Besides, that was honestly the last thing on our minds anyways. But now we’re here and we need to get this going.

So, first we thought, “Ok, we’ll use Google translate?” Now I think about that thought with a HUGE laugh because Google translate is a joke! And imagine the typing and then trying to align the melody with the lyrics you don’t know how to pronounce? Ha! We actually tried one song this way… HI-LA-RI-OUS! And an epic fail.

Then we scoured the amazing, all-knowing YouTube. We found some songs but none we knew. So we figured, I guess we’ll learn all new songs? That made me sad because I’m quite attached to the church songs I’ve known for 17 years. Plus, that’ll take forever!

My husband had contacted a Pastor in our fellowship from Portugal. Or the Pastor contacted him, I can’t remember, but anyways he was kind enough to send us several songs. However, European Portuguese is to different for us to use those songs so we went back to the drawing board…

Eventually we visited a church here a few times and recognized some songs they sang so I took pics of their notes and we typed them out and added them to our now growing collection. But, it was like, 2 songs. Finally, the girl there told me where to find songs online and it’s been a blessing! So we’ve got lots of typing and printing out to do now. We still need to be careful because some songs aren’t translated properly. A lot of the songs we needed were on YouTube (& those are more accurate) but when translated to Portuguese they had completely different names! That’s why we couldn’t find them before. We’ve literally had to click on EVERY song to see if we recognize it. It’s become a game in this house. Name that tune!

Speaking of which can someone please tell me what this song is called in English? I’ll be eternally grateful! I don’t remember if we sang it in a church somewhere or its just a christian song I’ve heard before! Help!

Now that we’ve gotten lyrics, I need the chords. I left my music in the states because of a problem with the airline not letting us take all our luggage so that’s another obstacle we’re working out. But, we’re closer than when we started and I’m grateful. I’m not the most amazing piano player and I still need my notes. Not just any will do. I need what’s familiar to me or I’m lost. And anyone in song service knows there’s several different keys for songs. Ugh! I’m getting a headache just writing this.

Hopefully I can get all this together to be a blessing to any other pioneer coming to Brazil. It’s not enough to have lyrics and notes on a page. Hearing someone sing the song is a HUGE help! God is helping us and the people coming to bible study can sing along with what we’ve accumulated and that’s what matters. I love to hear people worship God in Portuguese, it truly is a beautiful language. We’ve recently met a Pastor from our fellowship in Florida and he grew up here in Brazil. He’s been a blessing by proof reading things for us. Praise God for someone in our fellowship that’s fluent in Portuguese. I hope we meet more out there willing to help!

Sometimes I really dislike Portuguese…a lot. Sometimes my brain hurts so bad from trying to learn it. Did you know there are 50 different ways to say “this, that and those”!? Did you know there are 4 or 5 different ways to say “play”. Depending on whether you’re referring to playing a sport, an instrument, with kids, etc. Portuguese is easier for my husband, whose learning it from Spanish. I still freak out that when the noun becomes plural then almost every word in the whole sentence practically changes. Is that really necessary? Can’t we just add an” s” and be done with it!? (I’m half kidding, by the way)

I try to be proud of what I have learned instead of how much I still need to learn and that usually helps. One day I know I’ll be excited to be fluent in two languages. My hubby will be trilingual! How lucky is he!? He already gets his Portuguese and Spanish mixed up because they’re so similar….yet they’re not. If that makes any sense…

God has opened many doors here and we’re so excited for our building! Keep praying for souls and for us to learn this language!

I want to thank new friends I’ve met from this blog and for your prayers. We are truly a unique fellowship! Us missionaries are so blessed to have new friends and old reaching out and blessing us.

We especially send our thanks to McAllen! You guys are so awesome and such a blessing. We feel your prayers and heart for this nation! We pray God blesses you all! We miss you.
Tchau!

P.S. If you want to read other blogs from our Fellowship or you’re a Fellowship Church and want your blog added go check out cfmblogs.com

UPDATE: Since writing this post we’ve found a lot of songs thanks to Vineyard Brasil & Hillsong Brasil. We’re learning all new songs practically, but I’m so thankful to have plenty of options! Thanks for your prayers!

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Happily married Christian mother of two. Gave my life to Jesus at 17 in 1997. He saved me, cleansed me, turned my life and set my feet upon His solid ground. Love Brazil & the US, love to read, love technology and love to homeschool my children and date my husband.
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Not sure I understand your dilemma completely with song needs, but here’s the link to Tucson website worship songs: http://www.thedoorcfc.com/resources/worship-songs
there is one in Spanish too, although I doubt that’s comparable enough to Portuguese Maybe you can find a local to translate the songs you want, which would be a great way to reach them for the Gospel too! I tried to listen to the song/video link of Santo, and sorry I don’t recognize it myself. Will keep you guys in prayer! 🙂

Hi Heather! Thanks for the ideas! We found several songs from
Hillsong/Vineyard Brasil and some are the ones we sing in our churches only they are in Portuguese. The problem is simply finding a correct translation. We tried running songs by people we’ve met but these are people either new to the gospel, or not saved so they weren’t familiar with some “christian” words. We’re thankful for the songs we found! I’m sure once we’re more fluent we can translate some then. Until then we’ll use what we got! Another issue is pronunciation. It’s probably the biggest difference between Spanish & Portuguese. Anyways, thanks! God bless ya!

Oh, okay I think I understand now. Just remember, the more you hear the language spoken, and speak it yourself, the easier it’ll get. I personally watched a lot of Hindi movies, and listened to a lot of Hindi songs to get a good grasp on a lot of the pronunciation. I still need practice, especially on sounds that don’t exist in English. I read a book titled “Dreaming in Hindi”, which was pretty insightful about learning a second language, although it was definitely a “eat the meat, spit out the bones” type of book. It’ll all be worth your efforts though! 🙂

Have you considered using your tablet for song service? I use setlist helper on my Android tablet which makes it really quick & easy to transpose chords on the fly. No printing needed so any mistakes are corrected as I practice. My husband and I both have setlist helper, so it automatically syncs our songs & sets. It’s super easy to use too since it syncs to your desktop computer as well.

Wow Melody I can see why you would be frustrated but just remember that God knew what he was doing when he chose you. Man I tried to sing that song with the portugese lyrics and I couldnt get the tune for the life of me.

Thanks for your encouraging words Celi. Thanks to YouTube we’ve gotten a good selection now. Probably only the amount of a revival sized song service but I’m not complaining! They’re great songs and should work for now!